A Paler Shade of White---Sasha Frere-Jones Podcast and New Yorker article Criticizing Indie Rock for Failing to Incorporate African-American Influences

U2 is disqualified because that's not indie rock like the clash

maria has some sad looking old comp with aphex twin and others on it that has ui on it as well. ui-vs-luke vibert or something? i've never listened.

Lord, I probably have that comp still, or had it.

Skot why is there no indie-funk influence in black metal? I am so sad at this turn of events.

Ha, looks like those Arcade Fire guys know more about some of these issues than SFJ does, or at least leafed through a copy of Ned Sublette's book in the bookstore.

meanwhile, this week sasha is stumping for the animal collective. which is just boring. score another one for brian wilson fans. why don't rock critics want to write about funky stuff? doesn't angie stone have a new album? sasha and i do share a love for keren ann at least. the funkiest of them all!

"Skot why is there no indie-funk influence in black metal? I am so sad at this turn of events."

but meanwhile black & roll is one of the big trends in metal land these days. 70's blues rock solos + grim frostiness. so there!

here is that comp. maybe i will actually listen to it:

A1 Barbed Vibrators
A2 Luke Vibert Controlling Transmission
A3 Sycophants, The Second
A4 Spring Heel Jack Sweep
A5 UI Out
B1 Mellowtrons, The I Want You So Mad Because You're Bas
B2 Wormhole Headbanger
B3 David Kristian Strange Mountaineers
B4 Tortoise Why We Fight (D Version)
B5 Sycophants, The Fourth
C1 Margoo Villain
C2 Infrastructure & Thurston Moore Yvonne/Thaw
C3 Newt Epsilon Boot
C4 Stick Basin Pin
D1 Mike Flowers Pops vs. Aphex Twin Debase
D2 Echo Park Razor Kiss
D3 Luke Vibert & UI Unknow
D4 Sycophants, The Third

oh: united mutations: lo recordings vol.3

And he never really explains well in the Paler Shade of White article or the Animal Collective one, why they should matter despite his theory and why they are an aceptable exception.

Nit-picky stuff--Tom Tom Club were on Sire that was distributed by a Major, so again he is asking certain of today's indie bands to live up to what one major label offshoot act did years ago (while choosing to leave out of the equation today's major label acts)

i think i still have a vocokesh/ui split 12" - i dont remember what it sounds like but its clear vinyl in a clear sleeve which is kinda nice

I like that he commends Win's civility and that he's willing to "engage the ideas in the piece." Some people are being rather rude to the QEII, I'll admit.

that will happen when youre willfully provocative

btw i am listening to for the first time a song by an indie blog hype band called the black kids with a chorus saying "dance dance dance"

IT'S SFJ'S HAPPENING AND IT'S FREAKING HIM OUT

A+++++++++

i think what a lot of disillusioned (with the state of amerindie or u.k. indie guitar-based stuff) indie fans have done is what a lot of younger indier (than me) ilmers have done: sought out better stuff via the internet that is more challenging/more fun/weirder/has more beats per minute/etc. the onslaught of reissues, funky blogs, beardo stuff, ENDLESS cool disco/electro/newwave mixes, all that stuff that ilm raves about that is electro/electronic based, etc, etc. even annie from friggin' norway. anyone with a brain does NOT need to spend more than five seconds bemoaning the lack of ANYTHING in an arcade fire record. god bless the arcade fire. unfunky old tyme amish bartender looking motherfuckers that they are. they are hardly the beginning or end of anything. certain semi-bookish twerps will always flock to that stuff.

maybe it's just easier to pick on a few bands for not being more this or that than it is to catalog the 50 zillion examples out there that people can listen to that would provide suitable grooves, soul, etc.

now they are paraphrasing sam cooke or maybe jimmy buffet while sounding very classic rock

Finally, white bands ripping off black groups! Like back in the good old days!

yea it's confusing that sasha presumably received ALL SORTS of intelligent commentary and criticism of his article, and even if he didn't, there's tons of it elsewhere on the web (e.g. wilson's slate piece, as well as many points in this thread to name just a couple), but his responses on the NYer blog pretty much fail in really ENGAGING with those criticisms (or even mentioning them).

it's just like there are now 1000 counterpoints and dead-on criticisms but he just seems to be pushing the same old, reductionist shtick of the article. it's like "oh all these people wrote frustrated responses but i'm not really gonna deal with the really complex ones, i'll just list some praise and a couple of other points people made and not really engage at all. my shtick stands and that's how i see it." err. his blog responses were pretty frustrating.

The Black Kids take me back to that beautiful period between Pat Boone and Pavement where people weren't caught up in identity politics and could just boomshackalackaboomshackalacka

i think they might be actually black

it's just like there are now 1000 counterpoints and dead-on criticisms but he just seems to be pushing the same old, reductionist shtick of the article. it's like "oh all these people wrote frustrated responses but i'm not really gonna deal with the really complex ones, i'll just list some praise and a couple of other points people made and not really engage at all. my shtick stands and that's how i see it." err. his blog responses were pretty frustrating.

Yeah it would be funny to see his response if he presented this as a paper at a conference, with a Q&A and/or a panel discussion.

now im listening to the new howling hex which is pretty over the top funky

btw these are my final oink downloads :(

i think they might be actually black

aww!

i know right

So I e-mailed him at his New Yorker e-mail address and sent bits from here, Wayneandwax.com, the Playboy.com thing, Slate, and Idolator. He started out on his own blog by saying that he wanted to hear feedback, so that's what he is getting.

now be civil

good for you curmudgeon. i've been whining about it but haven't sent anything to him.

also in the final oink batch is lcd soundsystem and blog hype funky indie band vampire weekend

I sent mostly civil things. I did not send most of Jess Harvell's funny bits on Idolator where he rated bands at CMJ based on a Sasha Frere-Jones test.

more slap bass, plz

who's that french chanteuse he creems his jeans over all the time?
i guess chicks can sound white in sasha's world.

-- gershy, Tuesday, 16 October 2007

sasha and i do share a love for keren ann at least. the funkiest of them all!

-- scott seward, Saturday, 27 October 2007

thanks, scott!

After listening to that the Arcade Fire are, too, influenced by black music mp3, I'd just like to say that I would sure like to have some of whatever Will Butler's been putting in his pipe lately.

"Who needs to think when your feet just go?" is some cartesian bullshit.

Arcade Fire are obviously influenced by black music. They have a drummer and bass player, for starters. Where is the rhythm section in the music of Mozart and Brahms?

x-post

Good call re the Tom Tom Club lyric "Who Needs to Think When Your Feet Just Go." Will Sasha defend his carelessy worded Pat Boone and white rock =thinking, black music=dancing and sex (but no thinking) inferences or just keep to saying "Miscegenation felt like the right word, warts and all," and: "Most of the e-mails I’ve received about “A Paler Shade of White” fall into one of three categories: frustration with my focus on indie rock (mainstream, non-indie music has remained fairly miscegenated, give or take a year, and so tells a different story); complaints about the omission of [insert name of a current band], which proves that indie music nowadays is miscegenated (or whatever I alleged it wasn’t); pleas to listen to the sender’s band, which proves that indie music nowadays is etc. None of the examples changed my feeling about the arc I described, which started in the early nineties."

No admissions regarding questionable language, and the same SFJ rock history that ignores various examples from the 50s to the present (or dismisses them as exceptions). Plus he's not even trying to explain why the indie-rockers he has described are different than pop chart artists or jambanders or rap-rockers. Why didn't Dr. Dre and Snoop's impact affect the others the way he suggests it has affected indie?

geir makes you think

Mozart's last utterance was apparently a drum part from the "Lacrimosa."

Isn't Pat Boone basically just a BAD Elvis Presley, making milquetoast covers of Tutti Frutti?

Yea, not sure how turning vital music into schmaltz is using your head as opposed to hips,or a uniquely Anglo-American thing, although it did work financially for Pat Boone.

Posting way back: see, if Grand Royal and trip-hop and whatnot count as "indie" in retrospect, there's no reason loft-party electro and Diplo mixes and Fannypack and the Blow and select undie rappers shouldn't qualify now! Which I think is basically Scott's point, that there's very little reason to imagine many people live in a musical world that's strictly indie guitar-pop bands; on one end you have music geeks and indie die-hards who listen to a lot of other stuff, and on the other you have casual fans who might enjoy the Decemberists alongside Jill Scott or something. The only demographic I can imagine being seriously limited to this stuff would be in that teenage range where you get all dogmatic about only approving of one thing.

iirc grand royal for notorious for signing shitty indie bands.

another example of terrible trip-hop/indie "synergy": folk implosion.

i think they might be actually black

aww!

-- da croupier, Saturday, October 27, 2007 3:33 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Link

i know right

-- jhøshea, Saturday, October 27, 2007 3:35 PM

a++

Yea, not sure how turning vital music into schmaltz is using your head as opposed to hips,or a uniquely Anglo-American thing, although it did work financially for Pat Boone.

-- curmudgeon, Saturday, October 27, 2007 2:15 PM (Saturday, October 27, 2007 2:15 PM) Bookmark Link

Peabo Bryson to thread.

Lionel Richie saved us from the Commodores, moving music from the hips to the head.

um, excuse me, all night long? jumbo jumbo, motherfucker!

Oh, what a feeling.

Speaking of Lionel Richie's head